RIAA Issues Statement on Megaupload Shutdown

Plus: Other filesharing sites shutter, Kim Dotcom making an album

Days after online file-sharing hub Megaupload was shut down by federal prosecutors, Billboard reports that the RIAA's Vice President of Strategic Data Analysis, Joshua P. Friedlander, has issued a statement about the shutdown on the organization's blog.

In the post, titled "Why Closing Megaupload Matters", Friedlander points to data that shows that digital music sales rose after file sharing service Limewire's shutdown in 2010. He suggested that the same could happen following Megaupload's shutdown: "Collectively, this evidence strongly suggests that the shutdown of illegal sites helps create a thriving and diverse digital marketplace. It encourages users to go to legitimate sites, and enables great new services to be launched - like Spotify, which launched in the US last year and quickly signed up millions of new users. It's always reassuring when the data we see in the market reflects what we thought was just common sense."

The New York Times reports that other file-sharing sites are taking preventative measures to avoid a fate similar to Megaupload's. Filesonic, Fileserve, FileJungle, UploadStation, 4shared, VideoBB, VideoZer, UploadBox, and Uploaded.to are among those sites that have either altered their services to stop allowing public sharing, stopped allowing U.S. users, or shut down completely.

Joseph "Papo" Besson, VP of Operations of Printz Board's production company Beets & Produce, told MTV Hive, "It is a phenomenal project... Printz Board is executing the vision that Kim has for this project to the letter. Kim is also pushing the limits with this project. He has some huge surprises for everyone. The mix of a musical genius in Printz and an actual genius in Kim Dotcom will be history in the making, I'm sure of it." A future Best New Music for sure, folks.